Living Car Free - Today's Housing Model Is Unsustainable for the Long Haul

Today's Housing Model Is Unsustainable for the Long Haul
By Katherine Salant
Saturday, May 20, 2006; Page F05

Ask most home builders these days what they sell, and they will say a lifestyle. In most cases, that means a house on the outer fringes of suburbia with a yard for the kids and a garden for the folks. The house has plenty of room to pursue hobbies, entertain friends, bond with the family and get away from it all in a spacious master suite.

But is that lifestyle sustainable for the long haul? That is, in meeting our needs, are we compromising the needs of future generations? The needs of our children and our children's children?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/19/AR2006051900649.html


xxx

Don't forget all the skyscrapers that take boatloads of
manmade energy to use and build. :mad: :mad:

Thanks for the article, train. Lately I've been reading a lot about the problems with suburbia, and the new urbanist approach to city planning. It's a great topic to look into.

The house has plenty of room to pursue hobbies, entertain friends, bond with the family and get away from it all in a spacious master suite.

And how many families, with both parents working 40+ hrs/week, plus commuting, have the time to entertain, have hobbies, or bond with their family?

I live in a small town in a rural area - not exactly farmland, but low population density. Even here we have suburbia, many of our town employees don't even live in town! I don't understand why people think they have to live far away from town, and have a huge lot of land (to go with their huge house) to keep everyone away from them. I don't want the neighbors looking in my windows, to see in theirs, or to hear any wild parties or whatever at inconvenient times, but a lot in town seems to have sufficient space for privacy, and doesn't require higher property tax payments, or a long daily commute. Rrrrr...stop me before I go on.

From the article:
>>>>"A sustainable lifestyle uses less energy, less land and fewer resources. It's living in an apartment in a city like New York or Boston and using public transit or walking to work, school and shopping areas."<<<<

Agreed.

Unfortunately, apartments in New York City and Boston while "sustainable" have become unaffordable and something has to be done about this because there is a glut of luxury housing that remains empty and prices are NOT dropping.

Furthermore, homes in the burbs are NOT cheap either and prices are so outrageous, you are seeing banks offering 40 and 50 year loans for home buyers.

The price of fuel is the X factor and there is no solution. The days of cheap gas is over so life is going to get very expensive if you need two cars and have to heat a huge house during the winter.

But is that lifestyle sustainable for the long haul? That is, in meeting our needs, are we compromising the needs of future generations?

This is the main problem: perceived need. No one needs a huge house in the suburbs, but think that they do. Material goods are the mark of success in the U.S. and the bigger/more expensive the better. It's also part of the car culture. Once you have a big house and a big, fast luxury or sports car, you've made it. Success has nothing to do with personal happiness or achieving personal goals, it's about misery (a.k.a. fooling other people into thinking that you make more money than you do and killing yourself to keep making the credit card payments on time).

There's also the fact that many white suburbanites think that the city is full of Black and Hispanic people murdering and robbing each other and every white person they see (I'm exaggerating ;) and not trying to be racist, just portraying the stereotypical white suburbanite). In Denver people have such an inflated idea of the crime rate downtown. Like any other city there are certain areas that are best to stay away from in the middle of the night, but most of the city is quiet and peaceful. I often ride or walk around my neighborhood after midnight and all I see are drunk college kids walking home from bars or hanging out in their yards. But some people think that if they go outside in my neighborhood after dark, they'll be mugged or raped.

This is the main problem: perceived need. No one needs a huge house in the suburbs, but think that they do. Material goods are the mark of success in the U.S. and the bigger/more expensive the better. It's also part of the car culture. Once you have a big house and a big, fast luxury or sports car, you've made it. Success has nothing to do with personal happiness or achieving personal goals, it's about misery (a.k.a. fooling other people into thinking that you make more money than you do and killing yourself to keep making the credit card payments on time).


Agreed.

The car/suburbs culture is all about indebtedness. It's about spending your entire life paying mortgages, car payments and credit cards. Then you wonder why we have a negative savings rate and a record number of bankruptcies.

The writer makes the claim that we are compromising the future. Guess what? It's already happened. The burbs for the most part are complete and the damage is done. We can't reverse sprawl and the population continues to grow with most of the available land within 50 miles built up to single family homes. So we're stuck and the future is compromised.

The days of cheap gas is over so life is going to get very expensive if you need two cars and have to heat a huge house during the winter.


You heat your house with gasoline?

The thing is you cannot tell people how to spend hier money, that's how it works.


I live in a 1 bedroom home, not a Mcmansion, my choice.

You heat your house with gasoline?

I heat mine with oil, and I can tell you it is getting nuts. I spent a massive amount of money this winter (a very mild one) and my house was still chilly most days. I hear that electricity prices are expected to go up a great deal here (MA) soon. Unfortunately, it is not just gasoline prices that are going up it is all energy costs. Gasoline gets all the press, but is really not the one that is killing me (bless my bicycle).

Don't forget all the skyscrapers that take boatloads of
manmade energy to use and build. :mad: :mad:

Actually large buildings require much less energy to heat than small ones and since they encourage high population density, they also encourage mass transit.

You heat your house with gasoline?
It's all the same. Natural gas is used to extract oil from the tar sands, and to power some vehicles. Some oil and gas can be recovered from coal. They're all part of a web of energy. If the price of one fossil fuel goes up, they all go up.

Actually large buildings require much less energy to heat than small ones and since they encourage high population density, they also encourage mass transit.

The Romans built apartment buildings ("insula", or "islands") up to about 5 stories because people would climb stairs that far. Much higher and you have to spend a lot of energy on elevators and water pumps.

The Romans built apartment buildings ("insula", or "islands") up to about 5 stories because people would climb stairs that far. Much higher and you have to spend a lot of energy on elevators and water pumps.

In the US, most buildings over three stories will have an elevator. I doubt that pumping water used more energy than heating it or heating the building.

In any case, it is very short sighted just to look and the energy consumption of a building without considering the overall energy consumption of its inhabitants. Assuming the same number of square feet per person and the same number of people, a twenty story apartment building will occupy a quarter of the land of a five story building. That population density level will strongly encourage the use of mass transit since parking will be very expensive and the number of people requiring transportation over a given area will be much higher. Forty story buildings would be even better. A forty story building I lived in in Manhattan had about 250 apartments on a site which was probably no bigger than four acres. In some surburbs of NYC, four acres is enough space for exactly two houses (because of zoning issues). These towns do not of course have any public transport.

The problem with our cities being dsyfunctional is largely due to the car. Cities have but one purpose--allowing people to live closely together and be near to where they work thus eliminating the need for costly transport which is what costs the most versus everything else. Climate control and amenities for buildings is cheap, moving people isnt. I live downtown in the city where I live, I always find it both scary and amusing that there is more square footage set aside for the almighty automobile than ANYTHING else. Comparing office space to parking/road square footage is pretty enlightening, road/parking has office space beat by more than 2 to 1 !!

When fuel gets truly expensive we will see a gradual removal of all the car infrastructure and it will be replaced by room for people and living, or our cities wont live thru the powering down process. Imagine 5 lane one way streets converted back to one lane with buildings or areas to grow food put in their place........just like it was 150 years ago, and as it should be.

Imagine 5 lane one way streets converted back to one lane with buildings or areas to grow food put in their place........just like it was 150 years ago, and as it should be.

I don't believe our cities will revert to how they were. I hope they can become something better. However, if you need help visualizing what pedex is talking about, our Library of Congress has made some panoramas of cities as they were available on the web. Your city might be among them. You might find it more convenient to download the viewer. The viewer lets you convert the files to *.tiff format.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/pmhtml/panhome.html

If you can find other maps of your city at the LOC American Memories site, you might be able to visualize the changes but the panoramas require less immagination.

I think we're missing a huge component of population........waste

I think we're missing a huge component of population........waste

I assume you mean garbarge Thats a whole different discussion, the amount won't be any greater if you squeeze the population into a smaller space. It might even be less.

I assume you mean garbarge Thats a whole different discussion, the amount won't be any greater if you squeeze the population into a smaller space. It might even be less.

Yes - just think about all the waste that lawns generate - grass clippings and leaves especially.

Yes - just think about all the waste that lawns generate - grass clippings and leaves especially.

Ewww,,,yuck, LEAVES!~ <shudder>

Yes - just think about all the waste that lawns generate - grass clippings and leaves especially.
That's the easiest kind of waste to eliminate. You just stop categorizing it as waste, and presto! Problem solved.

That's the easiest kind of waste to eliminate. You just stop categorizing it as waste, and presto! Problem solved.


Solid waste continues to receive a great deal of media attention across the country as cities and counties deal with the lack of available space to dispose of household garbage and municipal solid waste. How to manage our wastes has been a problem for decades.
...
Q. What goes into a solid waste landfill? What happens to it over time?

A. In 1990, on average, the solid waste that went into a typical municipal landfill was estimated to contain 38% paper; 18% yard waste (trimmings, leaves, etc.); 8% metals; 7% food; 7% glass; 6% wood; 8% plastics; and 8% miscellaneous. Biodegradable materials may decompose over many years, while non-degradable materials, such as glass and most plastics, remain at the site.

http://www.epa.gov/compliance/basics/majorlaws/solidwaste.html

Hopefully your local trash pickup is composting this instead of filling up holes in the ground. Even better - compost it yourself and avoid the cost and expense of having huge trucks driving around pickiing it up for you.

city of columbus does it like most cities, trash is dumped during the day and spread out over the pile by bulldozers, then at the end of each day or several days they spread a thin layer of dirt over it, lather rinse repeat

almost zero recycling, just the usual disposable items like cars,tires, some glass, and some metals get a little recycling attention

give it some time, its another situation high priced low density energy will fix


wanna see a really really big trash dump, south end of NYC, bronx I believe, you can see it off of the LIE I think, anyway, its probably 40-45 stories tall by now,last I saw it, it had to be about 25 stories high long ago

Hopefully your local trash pickup is composting this instead of filling up holes in the ground. Even better - compost it yourself and avoid the cost and expense of having huge trucks driving around pickiing it up for you.
We have municipal yard waste composting but I don't use it much...why waste the fuel? I dump all the leaves in a 4'X4' crate I built in a corner of the yard, and only rake em out every year or two, I pull weeds in the flower garden and hedge, and toss them to the back of the bed out of sight, and I leave grass clippings on the lawn. I don't get much thatch buildup, which I hear is much more of a problem if you use fertilizer, which I don't. Any dead branches are thrown on a pile, unless they're large enough for the fireplace. A corner of my property is wild, abutting a ravine, and the undergrowth hides a lot of biomass.

wanna see a really really big trash dump, south end of NYC, bronx I believe, you can see it off of the LIE I think, anyway, its probably 40-45 stories tall by now,last I saw it, it had to be about 25 stories high long ago


Don't know if it has actually made it yet or not, but a landfill in eastern Indiana was on the verge of becomming our highest point. There's something to make a person proud.

Then there is always Mt Trashmore (http://www.virginia.org/site/description.asp?AttrID=24654&MGrp=1&MCat=12):p Recycling in the US is a major joke. In our area it is against state law to place recycleable aluminum cans in the trash...but there aren't any recycling facilities available outside of the metropolitian areas.:rolleyes: so if you want to recycle you hop in your 13 mpg hummer and drive your 2# of aluminum 20 miles to the nearest recycle center :roflmao: I know a guy that was running a voluntary recycling facility for several years. The concept was you brought the stuff to the dumpsters and he would recycle and sell the baled plastic, glass, aluminum and carboard. It got to the point that it was costing him more to ship the recyclable goods to a facility than the material was worth. Until the tax structure is changed to support recycled products, and manufacturers are forced to use more recycle friendly products; ie. glass food containers and steel cans, nothing much is going to change. As far as housing who knows where that is headed. It is insane. The amount of square footage per person has almost tripled in the past 70 years. Now social services will tell you that you have to have a certain sized bedroom for each child or you are a bad parent. They will also tell that 6 people living in a 1100sf home with 3 bedrooms is substandard living condtions...EXUSE ME? I will decide what is substandard for me. I have always lived in "recycled" homes, typically in older neighborhood in town.

Aaron:)

The root of all of our problems is overpopulation. Nothing is going to improve until we turn the corner towards a smaller world population.

Sustainable means that the society does not consume more natural resources than can be replenished by natural biological and geophysical cycles, and does not produce waste faster than can be dispersed by natural biological and geophysical cycles.

The only way to create a sustainable society is to live within these limits.

But this also means reorganizing society along bioregional lines, not arbitrary political boundaries. Watersheds and aquifers don't recognize political boundaries and neither does the biosphere, so environmental problems and the need for sustainable, societal organization therefore extend and surpass these boundaries.

In order for housing to be truly sustainable, it must be within these limits. It should use local materials or be constructed with recycled materials within the bioregion. While those river stones from crystal clear mountain streams might look nice, removing them from streams causes all sorts of environmental problems (habitat destruction and erosion) and it takes a good amount of energy to transport them to your new show home.

Move into existing structures that are close to work and to the things you need. Hopefully, that will include a farmers market.

The root of all of our problems is overpopulation. Nothing is going to improve until we turn the corner towards a smaller world population.
That's partly true. It's also the case that some populations live more sustainably than others.

population of the planet exploded when petroleum came into widespread use by a factor of about 8 fold.........if we cannot find a way to live without petroleum and provide the same food output, about 4 billion less people will be on the planet

industrial revolution-->agricultural revolution---->next is the ecological revolution

That's partly true. It's also the case that some populations live more sustainably than others.

Which ones?

....wanna see a really really big trash dump, south end of NYC, bronx I believe, you can see it off of the LIE I think, anyway, its probably 40-45 stories tall by now,last I saw it, it had to be about 25 stories high long ago
Coming into NYC from Long Island, I was always impressed by the thousands of acres of cemeteries. Talk about high density housing! But these huge graveyards do represent another problem of both land use and "waste disposal."

Which ones?

Not us!


Per capita energy expenditure 2001

World 1,631.3
Asia (excluding Middle East) 890.1
Central America & Caribbean 1,265.4
Europe 3,621.3
Middle East & North Africa 1,487.1
North America 7,928.5
USA 7920.9
Canada 7999.5

Per capita energy expenditure 2001

World 1,631.3
Asia (excluding Middle East) 890.1
Central America & Caribbean 1,265.4
Europe 3,621.3
Middle East & North Africa 1,487.1
North America 7,928.5
USA 7920.9
Canada 7999.5
Cooker -- Very interesting, thanks. Can you provide a little more info?

What units are these figures in? Where did you find the data? It would be interesting to see historical trends. Was this information available too?

I was surprised that Canada surpassed the USA. I guess that's because of the colder climate and using more energy for heating, or because distances are greater, so more is used for transportation.

It's interesting that Europe is so much lower than N.A. when the living standards are similar. I'd like to see western Europe compared to less affluent eastern Europe, especially Russia, which is practically a 3rd world economy. Or E.U. versus the rest of Europe.

It's interesting that Europe is so much lower than N.A. when the living standards are similar. I'd like to see western Europe compared to less affluent eastern Europe, especially Russia, which is practically a 3rd world economy. Or E.U. versus the rest of Europe.

Well they do have much higher energy taxes. However, if one defines sustainable the way Jack Burns does, it could be argued that large parts of Africa are not living a sustainable lifestyle since they depend on foreign food aid.

Also odd is the way the Middle East was grouped in with Africa. I am guessing the gulf states don't worry too much about energy consumption.

middle east has an insanely high consumption rate, I suspect africa does not

as the energy shortage develops it will become painfully obvious what works and what doesnt:
arrid places will suffer
hot humid places will suffer
very cold places will suffer
places that need most or all of their food and water brought in from far away will suffer

lots of places will see combos of the above, many probably wont live thru it anywhere near the sizes there are today

middle east has an insanely high consumption rate, I suspect africa does not

as the energy shortage develops it will become painfully obvious what works and what doesnt:
arrid places will suffer
hot humid places will suffer
very cold places will suffer
places that need most or all of their food and water brought in from far away will suffer

lots of places will see combos of the above, many probably wont live thru it anywhere near the sizes there are today

Sounds like a recipe for WWIII. Africa would certainly be screwed.

We will see some die offs, those happen today and have been for a long long time........people starving in droughts and famines in Africa for example. Probably see quite a bit more migration, former russian republics and russia itself have been seeing this as well as a big decline in birthrates. The more stable less over stressed 3rd world countries will likely stop any industrialization and go backwards for awhile. Here in the US people will be moving away from places like south florida and phoenix and much of the north. Synthetic cities will have a tough go of it. Rail travel and access to shipping and adequate water will be very important, ingredients that positioned our cities where they are to begin with........the older ones anyway. I think china and india will have problems pretty bad, just the sheer numbers and environmental devastation alone with a sudden scarcity of energy will make life rough. If you cant grow enough food or import enough people starve. Cuba has already shown what their version of a forced powerdown looks like, and they had about 30 days notice, we have had and still have years before things could get dire.

Cooker -- Very interesting, thanks. Can you provide a little more info?

What units are these figures in? Where did you find the data?

Don't recall my original source...I first posted this iin an earlier threadand just recopied it today ....but the same data seems to be cited here (http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/energy-resources/variable-351.html)

Don't recall my original source...I first posted this iin an earlier threadand just recopied it today ....but the same data seems to be cited here (http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/energy-resources/variable-351.html)
Thanks cooker. that answered all my questions, or will when I have time to study it. They show the historical and country comparisons for pedex and adgrant and everybody. I used this earth trends site before when i was researching ecosystems in the Great Lakes.

One point that might slightly ameliorate our overconsumption stats, was the one adgrant made (post #34) citing Jack Burns. Canada is a food exporter, so if some of that Canadian energy expenditure went into producing grain or canola consumed in another country, then a portion of that cost should really be attributed to them. But there's no doubt Canadians consume a lot of energy for purely domestic purposes.

Thanks cooker. that answered all my questions, or will when I have time to study it. They show the historical and country comparisons for pedex and adgrant and everybody. I used this earth trends site before when i was researching ecosystems in the Great Lakes.

Very interesting numbers in that report. Some European countries consume about the same amount as the U.S. Others much less. The U.A.E. consumes much more.

And another oil producer, Venezuela, consumes far less.

And another oil producer, Venezuela, consumes far less.

Probably because the general population isn't seeing much of the oil money.